Failure? (Not) An Option!

My husband told me yesterday, that I should be writing “a positive” blog post again. I gave him a confused, yet slightly upset look as a reaction. What was he telling me? My daily diary posts are not “positive” enough? So he went on to explain, he meant a post like the ones I would have written before Covid-19. There was a life before Covid-19, right. Must have slipped my mind for a second!

Don’t tell him, but I think he is right. While I will share another daily Covid-19 diary entry later as well, life is transitioning to a new normal and so I am sharing my experience with you again today.

Just a heads up, it will not be 100% Covid-19 free, but it will not talk ABOUT Covid-19, more about what came with it, especially in Business life. In my job, it required a lot of decision making. There is different paths to “decision making”. One way is, that there is a (company) strategy and targets/goals and in order to achieve those, planning & decision making need to happen. While goals should be the part, that is creating pressure, they do not necessarily lead to true “agile decision making”. And yes, this term would definitely give you one square on a buzzword (aka bullshit) bingo sheet, for sure!

By the way, playing buzzword bingo in meetings is so much easier, when you are working from home. At least no one will see you do it! Want to play along on your next Corporate conference calls? Find a free buzzword bingo generator here:

https://myfreebingocards.com/funny/buzzword/edit

Like most all other companies, Corporates are seeking to be agile. Especially, when it comes to making decisions. And the secret sauce seems to be, empowerment. When you want to be agile in making decisions, you can’t push topics up the ranks all the time, until someone high up, who is very removed from the actual situation, finally decides.

Why? Well, first of all because they are not close to the topic / matter. In order to make an informed decision, they will need a lot of context. And since the topic moves through several ranks, the right level of context, catered to the potential decision maker, needs to be provided. Does that sound fast and agile to you? Did not think so.

Ideally, those that are having all the context already, are making the decisions. Quickly but not in a rush. In order for that to happen, at least two important things need to come together:

• Empowerment (true)
• Willingness

For me empowering people to make decisions means that you are letting them know clearly, that they can and even should make the decision. It also means, you are available as a consultant, if they need you to. It does not mean telling them, how to decide.

Willingness is a little bit more tricky. It means, the people you want to take over the decision making, are having the willingness and most importantly the courage, to do so. And of course this is nothing, you can drive, right? Wrong! Decision making is a muscle that needs to be trained. There might be people like me, that seek out decisions that need to be made and jump right in. And then there is those folks, that are not used to making decisions. As with any sports activity, with them you should start slowly and in intervals and not overwhelm them with the “highest weight” of a decision.

Why am I seeking out decisions and am jumping right in? I learned the hard way what happens (to me), when I am not taking ownership and am not making the necessary decisions that help me grow and develop. If you would like to learn more about how I started to train my “decision making” muscle, check out this blog post: https://mykindofsuccess.net/hero-heroine-or-victim-to-me-its-a-choice/

And this leads me directly to the fact that, for agile (or any kind of) decision making, there is actually three important things, that need to come together:

• Empowerment (true)
• Willingness
• Acceptance of failure as a likely outcome

Throughout my career I have been working for a good amount of bosses, that were really good at talking about empowerment. They also really liked the idea of others (me) making the decisions. And when things went well, there have been situations, where my decision suddenly turned into theirs. I am sure you can imagine why. And when I made the wrong decision? Then that was my mistake and I not only had to resolve it myself, I also had to take the blame for it all by myself, too.

This did not discourage me from making decisions, as I had experienced much worse and I have always been aware that I am not curing cancer, my failures are not likely going to kill anyone. I instead learned to learn from them and embrace them. I developed the understanding, that I am not infallible. And that perfect does not exist. I accepted, that failure is part of decision making and actually of “doing anything at all”.

In my “darker” years, I did not make decisions and I did not own my development or growth. I was standing still in a very uncomfortable spot. Picture someone standing in a heavy downpour, a thunderstorm getting closer, the branches of a tree are getting dangerously close to hit them. And there is a place, that would provide shelter, nearby. They can see it, but they can’t bring themselves to move there. That was me.

My colleagues know me for saying “if you are standing still, you are actually moving backwards, as the world around you keeps moving ahead.”. It is that way of thinking, that makes me jump right into decision making mode, whenever I feel it’s necessary.

So my acceptance of failure is all that I need to be agile, correct? Not quite! It would suffice, when it comes to decisions that only (or mainly) impact me. When I started Weight Watchers (now WW), I accepted that it would potentially not work for me. I felt I had nothing to lose, other than almost 60 lb and made the decision to start. This decision mainly impacted me, but gladly I got my husband to agree (not sure he actually did actively agree) to join. It made it easier, but it was not a showstopper for the decision making.

In a Business environment and whenever others need to carry your decision and the outcome with you, that other person (usually your boss or if you are lucky leader) needs to accept the potential of you failing as well. Because if you do fail and they do not have your back, you best case will be careful to make a decision again. Worst case, you will be losing your job.

As a leader, I am personally having a hard time working with people, who are shying away from making decisions. So whenever I first meet a new colleague or an entire new team (in Corporate it is not unusual, that you take over entire teams from one day to another), I let them know the following motto, that I have been living by, ever since I became a people leader:

Failures & mistakes made by my team, are mine. The only condition is, that you are honest with me and come to me ready with a solution proposal. Successes always belong to the team (member) who did the work, that came with the accomplishment.

And trust me, it’s not easy to live by this motto all the time. There is situations where I definitely feel like jumping in as I am not (yet) having the confidence that someone else will get it right. And of course I am there to provide guidance and support. But ultimately, the risk of jumping in and taking over comes at a higher cost for me. The cost of discouraging someone from making decisions. And the cost of depriving someone of the opportunity to learn from their own failures.

Would I let an important project go down the drainage, even though I noticed, that a wrong decision was made just to make a point on empowerment and accepting failure? No, absolutely not. If you can see something is about to go seriously wrong, you need to inject yourself and provide corrective guidance (you can call that feedback – check-out my article about the “how” on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/make-sure-you-complaining-nannette-coerlin/ .

The point is, in order to be agile in achieving goals, companies and people leader need to stop talking about empowerment and start training the decision making muscle of their colleagues. Including failures and all. As with every muscle, if you train it the right way, you will have a strong, high functioning muscle (~team).

Your leader is really a boss? Train this muscle yourself. Start small and show your successes and own up to your (also small) favors and collaborate to correct them. For some, the ability to accept failure is a muscle that needs training, too. Or it leads you to make the ultimate decision – to leave that boss of yours behind on your path to growth.

As I said earlier, there is another path to (agile) decision making – crisis. The crisis we are in right now, has pushed a lot of people into making decisions. Some of these were unfortunately not great decisions (check out my daily Covid0-19 blog diary for examples https://mykindofsuccess.net/category/social-distancing-diary/. )

However decisions were made. And in crisis mode, all of a sudden even Corporate America becomes agile, when it comes to decision making. Well, some companies are rather getting paralyzed, but that is a different story.

A crisis can force you to make decisions, fast. And sometimes too fast. While goals are sometimes not creating enough pressure to drive agility, a crisis often times suddenly creates too much pressure. And combined with (personal) stress and panic, the pressure might lead to poor decisions.

It’s quite complicated, this whole decision making thing. The bottom line is simple – when there is not enough pressure, you need to train the two critical muscles “decision making” and “accepting failure”. When there is a lot of pressure and tough circumstances, you need to make sure, you are taking a step back and are taking the time to evaluate the mid- and long term impacts of your decision. And if those are a risk, you need to decide if the short term outcome justifies the risk and how to build protection from that risk into your decision making.

In the current crisis situation, I had to make decisions about paying incentives and support, that contractually I am not obliged to pay and that I will not be able to continue paying long term. The risk was, that in paying these amounts now, I could create a precedence. So when I made the decision, that it was necessary paying them, I also made it clear that this was NOT a precedence for the future and would still be decided on a case to case basis. Keep making decision in times of crisis, just make sure you are in control!

Congratulations – you made a decision to read my blog and, since you are reading this, stick with it until the end. Thank you!

I would be super excited, if you now made the decision to leave a comment as well. See? We are already training that muscle.